Research Subject Area: Pure Mathematics

REF impact found 29 Case Studies

Currently displayed text from case study:
Select sections from document for display

Summary of the impact

This case study describes the development, application and
commercialisation of an open source tool, BSMBench that enables supercomputer
vendors and computing centres to benchmark their system's
performance. It comprehensively informs the design and testing of new
computing architectures well beyond other benchmarking tools on
the market, such as Linpack.

The significance of our code is that, unlike other benchmarking tools,
it interpolates from a communication- to a computation-dominated
regime simply by varying the (physics) parameters in the code, thus
providing a perfect benchmark suite to test the response of modern
multi-CPU systems along this axis. The impact of this work has great
reach: a start-up company, BSMbench Ltd, has been founded
to develop and commercialise the software; adopters have included IBM
- one of the giants of the supercomputer world (where it uncovered errors
in their compilers); it has been deployed by Fujitsu to validate
its systems, by HPC Wales, a multi-site, commercially focussed national
computer centre and by Transtec, an HPC company employing
over 150 staff; and tutorial articles about BSMBench have appeared
in magazines such as Linux Format.

This software tool spawned from our research into "Beyond the
Standard Model" (BSM) physics which aims to understand the Higgs
mechanism in particle physics at a fundamental level. This involved
simulating quantum field theories using bespoke code on some of the
fastest supercomputers on the planet.

Submitting Institution

Swansea University

Unit of Assessment

Physics

Summary Impact Type

Technological

Research Subject Area(s)

Summary of the impact

Professor Peter Giblin (Department of Mathematical Sciences at the
University of Liverpool), together with collaborators, used methods from
singularity theory to develop an approach for recovering 3-d information
from 2-d images, such as photos. In the past decade, these have been
implemented and built upon by software engineers, leading to significant
cultural, economic and societal impacts. These include the creation of an
innovative 25m high sculpture of the human body in the Netherlands by the
sculptor Antony Gormley and the virtual modelling of clothing on online
clothing websites such as Tesco's (Virtual Changing Room by
Tesco/F&F). These have reached thousands of consumers worldwide and
represent a significant commercial success for the company which developed
the software.

Summary of the impact

Researchers in the Department of Mathematics at Swansea University have
developed novel
geometric methods for image processing, feature extraction and shape
interrogation. The research
has delivered commercial and clinical impact in a variety of settings,
ranging from new water
marking techniques to improve piracy detection in the film industry, to
medical research
investigating the replacement of traditional CT scans with safer MR scans.
The research has also
delivered an automatic feature and gap detection tool that has been
successfully applied to aircraft
data files provided by BAE Systems. A consultancy company is exploiting
the methods and a
licence for the commercialisation of the technology is in process.

Summary of the impact

We demonstrate a strong influence on the design of the read head used in
the present state-of-the-art hard-disk drive (HDD) first produced
commercially in 2008. This much improved read head, enabling disk storage
density to increase by a factor of 5 to around 1 Tbit/in2,
relies crucially on a magnetic tunnel junction with a MgO barrier whose
huge tunneling magnetoresistance was predicted theoretically in a 2001
paper co-authored by Dr A. Umerski [1], the RA on one of our EPSRC-funded
research grants. This prediction relied on techniques developed by us over
many years, specifically in refs [2] and [3]. Such magnetic tunnel
junctions are used in all computer HDDs manufactured today with predicted
sales in 2012 amounting to more than $28 billion [section 5, source A].

Summary of the impact

This case study describes public engagement with the University of
Oxford's research in Mathematical Physics via the popularization of
science through the writings, public lectures and media appearances of Sir
Roger Penrose. Published in 2010, Penrose's book Cycles of Time
deals directly with the research contributions and has reached broad
audiences via books, public lectures, TV appearances, and YouTube
postings. The impact has been to engage large numbers of the public with
modern theories of the origin of the universe in a mathematically
non-trival way.

Submitting Institution

University of Oxford

Unit of Assessment

Mathematical Sciences

Summary Impact Type

Societal

Research Subject Area(s)

Summary of the impact

Advanced technologies for data visualisation and data mining, developed
in the Unit in collaboration with national and international teams, are
widely applied for development of medical services. In particular, a
system for canine lymphoma diagnosis and monitoring developed with [text
removed for publication] has now been successfully tested using clinical
data from several veterinary clinics. The risk maps produced by our
technology provide early diagnosis of lymphoma several weeks before the
clinical symptoms develop. [text removed for publication] has estimated
the treatment test, named [text removed for publication], developed with
the Unit to add [text removed for publication] to the value of their
business. Institute Curie (Paris), applies this data mapping technique and
the software that has been developed jointly with Leicester in clinical
projects.

Research Subject Area(s)

Summary of the impact

Spatial decomposition methods have been extended to apply to spatial,
scale, and temporal domains as a result of work at the Numerical and
Applied Mathematics Research Unit (NAMU) at the University of Greenwich.
This work has led to a numerical framework for tackling many nonlinear
problems which have been key bottlenecks in software design and scientific
computing. The work has benefitted the welding industry in the UK because
these concepts are now embedded, with parallel computing, in the
industry's modern welding design process software.

Submitting Institution

University of Greenwich

Unit of Assessment

Mathematical Sciences

Summary Impact Type

Technological

Research Subject Area(s)

Summary of the impact

By using the progress of his own research over the course of a year as a
major narrative theme, in Finding Moonshine Marcus du Sautoy
provides the public with unique insight into the content and nature of his
mathematical research programme. The success of the book, published in
2008, in conveying the essence of cutting edge research, in elementary
terms, attracted the attention of broadcasters and policymakers and
provided a platform from which du Sautoy has been able to expand his
public engagement activities to reach millions of people through TV,
radio, public lectures, social media and interactive projects. His three
part documentary The Code stimulated over a million viewers to
play Flash games based directly on mathematical concepts. The phenomenal
success of his unique brand of engagement in awakening an interest in
mathematics, in both young and old, has had a great impact on society.

Submitting Institution

University of Oxford

Unit of Assessment

Mathematical Sciences

Summary Impact Type

Societal

Research Subject Area(s)

Summary of the impact

A new company, Geomerics, was created as a spin-out from the Cavendish
Laboratory.
Geomerics now employs 22 full time staff, with offices in Cambridge, UK
and Vancouver, Canada.
Geomerics has pioneered a new business sector in selling lighting
middleware technology, based
on Cambridge research, to games developers. Customers include Electronic
Arts, Square Enix and
Take 2 (three of the five largest publishers) and licenses have been sold
in Europe, North America,
Japan and Korea. In 2011 the first game released using Geomerics software,
Battlefield 3, became
the fastest selling game in Electronic Arts' history, having sold nearly
20M copies.

Submitting Institution

University of Cambridge

Unit of Assessment

Physics

Summary Impact Type

Technological

Research Subject Area(s)

Summary of the impact

The Warner-McIntyre parametrization scheme for non-topographic
atmospheric gravity waves,
developed at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics
(DAMTP),
University of Cambridge, during the period from 1993 to 2004, has since
2010 been used by the
UK Met Office in their operational models for seasonal forecasting and
climate prediction .The
parametrization is regarded by the Met Office as a vital part of improved
representation of the
stratosphere in those models, which in turn has been shown to lead to
significant operational
benefits.